Windows and Mirrors
by Mr. Dorky
Summary: It's not easy to find four tighter friends than Derek, Gage, Tyrone, and Tristan. It seems rather hard to believe that this motley crew of teenagers would really end up in the center of a worldwide conflict, but when they get a call for help in quite an unconventional manner, it seems they can't refuse. To really complicate things, the world-wide conflict isn't even on their world.
1. Contact

_There are people who will tell you that there are no such things as coincidences. Everything happens for a reason. Someone or something is steering events in a direction that this someone or something wants things to go. There's a plan. We're all a part of it. Yeah, some people say that. I don't. The way I see it, everything is just one big coincidence._

_I don't see how there can be holy wars in the Middle East, hate crimes in the so-called Land of the Free, drug cartels running throughout South America, hunger and thirst among many African nations, and yet it's all part of some plan. That plan sucks. The world is in chaos, and it's about time someone put it right._

_The solution isn't order. Order got us into this mess. The solution is freedom._

**Windows and Mirrors**

Never is it a sad experience to come home from school. Even if little Richardson Court is just part of a tiny, stagnant subdivision that's a ways away from the actual city part of Raleigh, it's home to me. It's where my best friends live, and it's where school bullies would get their asses handed to them if they ever messed with any of us and ever decided to move there. That's why the Jensons ended up backing out of buying a house two doors down from mine. Ah, yes, such fond memories. That guy is still a dick to me at school, but I have that one little incident to hold over him.

Another thing that makes me elated to leave school is that my Freedom of Expression is restored; Walker High makes its students wear _uniforms!_ Khakis and dress shirts are not okay with me. I never feel complete if I'm not wearing dark jeans and the T-shirt of some obscure metal band. Teachers have also been constantly complaining for the one-and-a-half years of my high school career about the length of my auburn hair, but they can suck it because the school can't do anything about that.

The third thing I love about being home from school is that I know it's just a short break between school and the start of a good camping trip. Well, today anyway. The guys of the Court and I had this plan for a week, and that Friday was the day it would be lived. All of us get together quite often; we're a real tight group.

"Derek!" gladly greeted Tristan after I had rushed upstairs, changed out of my _uniform_, and headed right next door to find the other three of the gang standing around Tristan's father's gray SUV. That guy is 16 years old, just a year older than me, and has a demeanor that says "I'm totally awesome, but I'm willing to hang out with the little people like you anyway."

After exchanging the classic high-five-hugs among the group, we all piled in, and Tristan took the wheel. Like all vehicles packed with teenagers, the car was loud and crazy. Perfect. "Last again, Derek," he commented energetically, "and you know what that means!"

Not at all was I happy about my horrid fate for being last, but I laughed anyway. I don't really know why. I never do. "Yeah, yeah, I know," I responded, "Looks like the campsite rental's on me!" From around the car, a chorus of whoos and yeahs was short-lived, but quite audible while it was happening. "Hang on! Gage, you still owe me ten bucks from June!" I suddenly recalled.

"Fine," she quite reluctantly conceded and handed me the money. "That's the last time I bet you," she bitterly vowed. Gage is almost the polar opposite of Tristan. Tristan is loud and energetic, but Gage is a little more reserved and speaks in a low voice. She may dress like the preppy type even outside of school, but make no mistake that she has an attitude quite to the contrary. Even though she's a freshman, we're all above that kind of class difference.

"Well, it's your own fault for doubting my pizza eating skills," I happily snicker to her.

"Can you blame her?" Tyrone cuts in. "Nobody thought you could eat 14 slices without vomiting when you're so damn scrawny!" He went so far as to grab my left arm and stretch it out to prove his rather valid point. Good ol' Tyrone is always looking for a chance to earn a laugh, and rarely do his attempts fall flat, too. This one was made all the more hilariously demeaning by the fact that he's a defensive lineman on the school football team, and I well, I have a build more accurately resembling the water boy. Like I said, though, it's funnily demeaning.

I didn't really have a way to respond to that, so I didn't. I just started to stare out the window and observed my surroundings. The others ended up working themselves into a new conversation while I mostly just listened, as is my typical habit. "D' you think we'll be there before it starts rainin'?" Tyrone asked when we were on a moderately busy road. His question wasn't unwarranted, either; rain appeared to be forming, and the sky appeared to be waiting only for its cue to start pouring. "I don't feel like gettin' wet."

I chose then to jump back in. "The way things look now? I doubt it," I remarked, still staring out the window. "Hey, rain never hurt anybody, right?" It seemed that the last bit was in fact the storms cue. A glowing line streaked the sky for a split-second, and a low clap of thunder resounded with heavy bass.

"And I guess lightnin' never hurt anyone, either," snickered Tyrone back, nudging me lightly.

"You know, Ty," joined in Tristan, "I think lightning actually _has_ hurt people before!" The sarcasm was quite heavy, but that's why we all thought it was at a decently laughable level. Right then after, a significantly brighter lightning strike and a significantly louder thunder roar caught our attention and made all four of us jump. "Whoa, that one was close!" Tristan exclaimed.

"Relax," I tell him, even though he obviously wasn't genuinely scared, "It isn't actually that close. Besides, we're in a car. Rubber tires. Even if we were struck, nothing would happen."

"Yeah, we know, Derek," Gage remarked, seeming the slightest bit annoyed.

By the time of the next red traffic light, the storm had pretty much gotten going, and there was another seemingly close call. There was just one odd thing. "Geez, all the thunder and lightning, but no rain," observed Tristan once we'd stop. "You'd think it'd be raining by now, right?"

"Well, they say 'shit happens,' but now it looks like they should be sayin' 'shit doesn't happen,'" joked Tyrone. That one ended falling flat on its face, though. "But if I'm good and dry, that's fine by me!"

"You know, just because you're so reluctant to get caught in the rain," I snickered, "I really want to see it happen." We waited at that red light for quite a while, and the bunch of us was starting to get rather impatient. "Damn, what's taking this light so long?"

Tristan was highly annoyed, too, and it showed when he replied, "Man, I don't know!" He honked his horn then, almost as if thinking that it would make the light more likely to change soon. "Damnit, change!" Well, he ended up getting his wish. Right then the light went from red to green. The problem was that it went right back to red again, as if someone was manually operating the lights and just wanted to mess with us. Then it turned green again, then red, then yellow, then green, and then it just started flashing random colors randomly and rapidly. "What the hell…?"

Right after half a minute or so of this, the lights just went completely black. They had turned off entirely. "Well, that sucks!" bitterly snapped Gage.

"Ty," requested Tristan, "Call our parents, will you? I'm driving."

"Ha! Barely!" laughed Tyrone, but he took out his phone anyway. Something seemed off, though; it had apparently turned off without him doing anything. "Damn, I thought I charged this thing! Derek, got juice on your phone?"

"Yeah, one second," I responded, and extracted my own cell phone from my pocket. Mine had turned itself off, too, though. It also wouldn't turn back on no matter how many times I pushed the button to do so. "Okay, I know for a fact that I was at 75% battery just before I got in this car. Gage?"

Gage appeared to have taken a step ahead of me when she'd seen me having trouble. "Nope. That's weird." The thundering began to really pick up now.

"Same here!" called Tristan from up front. "What the hell is going on here? With the lights and our phones, it's like someone set off a fucking EMP!"

"Come on," I rebuked skeptically, "I doubt that." This time, there was no mistaking it: the next thunder clap was so loud that it left my ears ringing for a few moments and lightning quite clearly struck just by the side of the road. "Holy shit!" The ground appeared to be slightly charred.

"Alright," conceded Tristan, "screw the light, we're outta here!" He didn't even have time, though, to touch his foot to the accelerator before the next bolt hit the road, surely no more than a foot ahead of the car's grill. I could only barely hear that over more ringing from the thunderclap that accompanied the lightning "What the _fuck_ is going on here?"

I peered my head outside the downed window and looked straight up. The darkly clouded sky almost appeared to have a veined network of electricity running through it, kind of like an orb spider web with all of its spindles extending the center. _That can't be good…_What really made it scary was that the "center" seemed to be, well, right above us. As in, right above our specific car. "Oh, crap, everyone out! Get out!" I screamed, pulling my head back in.

Lightning seemed to then start raining down from the sky's nexus like, well, like rain. It barraged the ground all around us, and seemed to be getting steadily closer, almost resembling an orbital laser cannon from space homing in on its target. Everything just seemed to become pandemonium from there. Everybody who was sitting next to a door was struggling with sweaty hands and an unsound mind to get their doors open. Tyrone was the one who actually managed to get his open first, and he shouted, "Pile out!" when he did. It was too late though.

What had to be the greatest flash and the loudest bang of the bunch descended down from the center of the electroweb like the merciless wrath of an angry deity, and it landed directly on our car. I'm surprised that my hearing ever managed to recover afterwards, let alone so quickly and that my eyesight wasn't at all lost to me either. That didn't occur to me, though, until far later. Bigger things were at hand.

That lightning strike did not pass through the vehicle harmlessly as it should have. After it had hit, well, the simple if maybe a little overused way of putting it is that everything went black. All senses ceased to function for some fleeting period of time. Simply, I blacked out.


	2. Collision

It was easy to tell something was off before consciousness had even returned one hundred percent. It's like that stage of waking up from sleep where you're aware of everything around you, but just barely. My body was not in a sitting position, nor was it even in a cramped lying-down position. I was comfortably on my back, stretched out to take up perhaps a rather liberal amount of space. What I felt was not the fabric of a car seat nor even was it roughness of a paved road. It could have been mistaken for a bed if it wasn't about as squishy as the road, though. My ears reflected to the brain not bangs of thunder or the roar of car engines, but instead picked up chirping birds and… an opening zipper?

"Ever sheen any like thoshe before?" inquired somebody I'd never seen before, his, I thought, voice almost inaudible. He sounded sort of perplexed and seemed to be close to me, directly to my left

"I can't say I have," responded its counterpart. The second voice sounded feminine, but also a little low-pitched. Almost like Gage's voice, it could be supposed, but still not quite. That speaker sounded about as confused as the other, but with a little less emotion. Just as close, though, seeming to be right next to speaker #1.

_What… who… who's that…?_ I began to squirm a little and stretch my body out kind of like waking up from a real deep sleep. I guess the concept isn't really too different. "Nnnngh…," I grunted. My weakened senses were quite slowly returning, though some grogginess still remained.

_"_Hey! Hey, look! One'sh coming to!" excitedly exclaimed the first speaker.

My head felt like it was filled with water: hard to lift and almost not worth the effort. All I could really manage was shaking it around similar to the manner in which a wet dog would and laying it back down. Eyes now open, it's a fabric roof that is the first thing seen; it appeared to be the inside of Tyrone's tent. Looking straight forward out the open zipper door, the sky was merely mildly cloudy and quite sunny, as if it had been that way all day.

To my right lay Tyrone at the edge of the tent with Tristan between the two, both out of it. Looking to my left, I had expected to see Gage as well, but she was not there. Her sleeping bag was there, but empty… sort of. Nobody was in it, but two unfamiliar figures were kneeling on it. "Feeling better, human?" inquired the female. Had anybody else called me "human" I would start asking questions, but the sight of these two freaked me out to the point that if I had been asked what the definition of the word "question" was, I wouldn't have remembered. She had called me "human" because that speaker was not.

She was a fox. Well, sort of. An anthropomorphic fox, it looked like. Golden fur ran down most of her body from head to a small way past her knees, but beyond her knees, the tips of her ears, her paws, and the front area from the bottom of her neck down was white fur. A heavy tuft of that white fur was just below her chin, growing from the upper chest area. Oddly, as if the rest of that wasn't weird enough, she wore long purple bracers that extended almost to her shoulders. Oh, and she was about six inches taller than me, and I'm average height. Can one blame me if I stared with an agape mouth for a disconcerting amount of time?

She snapped her clawed digits in front of my face a few times. "Hey, human!" It took another head shake to come out of full-on trance mode and into weirded out status.

"Well, at leasht thish one'sh reacting better than the other one," remarked the male. Frankly, I didn't have a clue of _what_ animal to compare him to. He was about half my height with mostly blue skin. Yeah, _blue_ skin. Like the fox, white covered his front area, but his extended up past his chin and stopped and stopped just above his nose, which had the smallest of horns on the tip of it. Right between his big eyes lie a golden mark in the shape of a V.

I shut my eyes, face-palmed, and sighed very deeply. When speaking, I was a little slower in the speed of getting the words out. "Okay… I'm going to see if I can't put the fact that I have no idea who you are, _what_ you are, where I am, or how I got here aside for a small moment." I sat up, got into a cross-legged position, pretended to think for a moment, and conceded, "Nope, can't do it. Who are you, _what_ are you, where am I, and how did I get here? And where's Gage?"

"Gage is with Gatomon and Shoutmon. Relax," informed the fox, "They're outside. The human said to tell you that her 'cell phone' was working again and that her brother is coming to get you."

"Gage is with Gatowho and Shoutwhat? You know what, nevermind," I actually conceded this time. "Back to you two. Who, what, and from where. Now."

"Well, who ish eashy enough," began the blue thing. "The name'sh Veemon, but you can call me Veemon! Nice to meetcha!" he introduced energetically and with a wide grin. "Fockshee there ish Renamon," he explained, pointing to his golden fox counterpart. "Now you gotta tell ush who you are!"

I shrugged. "Well, I guess I owe you at least that much, though I'm so getting back at Gage for not having done that when she had this unbelievably awkward conversation," couldn't quite have been stopped from leaving my mouth in entirety. "It's Derek. I'm human. That would make you two…?" I trailed off, not really knowing how one asks a question like that. It isn't exactly a position I'd been in before.

"They're Digimon," stated the voice of Gage, now climbing back in the tent, having returned from who-knows-where. "Morning, sleeping beauty."

"Great. Okay, Digimon. That makes sense," I very heavily sarcastically remarked. "You mind telling me what that is?"

"The girl jusht told you," exclaimed the one apparently called Veemon, "it'sh what we are!" That's when a large cat wearing green mittens and a gold ring on its tail crawled in as well.

"Where's Mittens there from, Gage?" I snickered. "Mittens," on the other hand, or paw, didn't seem to appreciate the joke.

She _stood up_, taking a bipedal stance, and somewhat hostilely declared, "My name isn't Mitten's, human. It's Gatomon."

My lips tightened, and my eyebrows shot up like rockets. "Gage? I'm going to have to ask you to go get the heaviest thing you can find and hit me over the head with it as hard as you can. Maybe that'll help me wake up."

Gage stepped in again, "You're not dreaming. Ugh, it's crowded in here, can we go outside?"

"Finally!" I exclaimed, "I hear something that makes some sense." So, going outside is exactly what we did. Looking at the sky, I took my best guess at the time being around 16:30. Oh, and there was another one of those freaks out there, too. This one almost reminded me of a miniature robotic bipedal dragon without wings. He was leaned against one of the many trees that occupied the forested area we were apparently in, and in his left hand he carried… a microphone stand? Weird, huh? Well, that had since become the norm in my mind. If not, perhaps I would've gone completely crazy. "Ah, so you're, uh, Shoutmon, right?"

"Yeah, that's me!" exclaimed the thing that is apparently a digimon who is apparently called Shoutmon.

"I'm Derek. Great, that's out of the way. What the hell is going on here?"

"Well," interjected fox-face Renamon, "that is part of the problem. We don't know every detail either. We can try to answer some of your questions, though."

I'd been starting to get a bit frustrated, but the promise that my ignorance wasn't to last too much longer at least kept me from bursting. At the same time, it took a long, deep breath to really get set. "Okay. You said you were digimon. What is that?"

Renamon patiently responded, "The reason we're called digimon is because we're monsters-"

"Obviously," I interrupted.

"-from the digital world," she concluded without missing half a beat.

My eyebrows raised themselves again. "From the what now?"

"Basically," Shoutmon jumped in, "we're from another dimension."

Can anybody be blamed for being rather taken aback at that declaration? After all, it's not as if this was a situation that passes at all frequently. I decided to have a decent attitude, though, or at least the best one possible under such circumstances. "Okay, I'll admit to the fact that I find that hard to believe, but since it's also hard to believe that things like you four exist, I guess that's pretty moot.

"Watch who you all a 'thing,'" remarked Gatomon.

"Noted. What are you doing here then?"

"Well, that'sh the thing," began Veemon, "We don't know. We're as confushed about that ash you are. There wash jusht thish freak lightning shtorm, and poof! There we were, outshide your tent!"

"Outside our tent?" I pointlessly parroted. "Not by our car or the side of the road? How are we at the campsite, then?"

"Beatsh me," conceded Veemon.

I shut my eyes and turned my head downward, attempting to take all of this in. After a few moments, I addressed Veemon again. "So, tell me if I'm wrong. Mittens, Fox-face, Elvis, and you don't know how you got here, and the last thing you remember is a spontaneous lightning storm. How right am I?"

"That'sh pretty much it."

"Hang on!" jumped in Gage, "You said lightning storm. Did it rain?"

"No, it- wait, why doesh that matter?"

"We might have had a similar storm," I replied, kicking myself inside for having simply put that detail aside without any alarms going off before.

Renamon chipped in, "It was rather odd. Lightning would strike so frequently that it appeared to have been raining down."

"That's what happened to us, too," concurred Gage.

"Then here's we seem to be now," I began to summarize more for my benefit than anybody else's, "We eight were in simultaneous and similarly freaky storms despite being in different worlds at the time, and our best guess is that somehow here by accident. I don't feel at all less confused than when I woke up with Fox-face and… I'm sorry, what did you say your name was again?"

"It'sh Veemon."

"Right, Veemon! I guess it's nice to meet you, uh, again." I held a hand out towards him, and it just floated pointlessly in the air for a while as Veemon just stared at me confused. "Oh, you're supposed to shake it," I inform him, "Just some silly human custom, I guess," was what I observed next, slightly chuckling. Veemon shrugged and rather lightly clasped my right hand with his own. He had to and did watch his claws, though. However that wasn't a deterrent for a sharp pain starting in the tips of my fingers and spreading to the palm of my hand, rapidly spreading throughout the rest of my body as well. It felt like I was being shocked, and quite potently as well. I surely didn't last for over a second, though.

I didn't really try to let go of Veemon, seeing as I really couldn't, and he didn't pull his hand away during the contact either, but that is somewhat resemblent to what really occurred. A more precise manner to describe what happened would be to say that we were pushed away from each other. We made contact, I felt electrocuted, and we both flew back five feet or so from the directions that we had been previously facing. I got lucky enough to land butt-first flat on the grassy ground; poor little Veemon plowed into thick tree and appeared to hit his head on it.

When I had sat up, he had too, clenching his teeth and rubbing the back of his head. "What _was_ that?" we asked each other in unison, but of course his apparent speech impediment hindered his S.

Gage kneeled down by the site Veemon and I had just been standing and inspected the ground. She immediately found something in the grass and picked it up. "Hey, Derek," she called out to me, "is this yours?" She was holding up something that somewhat resembled a pocket-sized walkie-talkie, except that it had a wide screen, a couple of buttons on it, and nothing to speak into or hear out of. Most of it was a solid white, but the buttons and grips on the sides were a hue of blue that matched the color of Veemon's skin so closely that one could think is was based off of him specifically.

Shoutmon narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the unfamiliar device. I bounded towards Gage to get a closer gaze at it, but already I knew that it wasn't mine. "Nope, not mine. I've never seen it before." I offered my hand in request to be given the machine, and Gage complied. As soon as it had touched my skin, a couple of the buttons faintly lit up, and the screen flickered a little before illuminating itself in white. I pressed no button and flipped no switch, but it powered up once it was in my hand in total disregard and perhaps even in spite of what is meant to be possible. "Gage," I inquired, "what is this?"

Gage just shook her head in confusion. I guess she can't be blamed. _Well,_ I thought,_ I guess there's only one way to figure this one out: the "what does _this_ button do?" game. _Rather foolishly, I pushed one button at complete random. The screen got bright enough to be used as a powerful flashlight before the real freakiness began. This sounds ridiculous, but a light beam actually extended out from the machine's screen, shined on Veemon as well as utterly obscured him from view, and then retracted back inside the device… and took Veemon with it. Everybody, human and otherwise, widened their eyes and took a sudden inhale.

After a few moments of total confusion and awe, the machine softly beeped twice, and Veemon's image appeared on a white background on the screen. "What the- get me out of here!" it cried while seeming to be beating on the inside of the screen.

"What- uh," I fumbled about, "uh, hang on, which was it? This one?" Hands shaking a bit, I mashed multiple times on what I believed was the same button as before. The same light as previous appearing, at least, appeared to be a decent sign. Once more, it seemed to extend outwards like a telescope, retracted the same way, and appeared to deposit the poor, distraught Veemon before me.

"Ugh… I don't like shmall shpaces…"

I turned towards Renamon, Shoutmon, and Gatomon in order to ask them, "I don't suppose any of you have any idea of what just happened?"

Gatomon seemingly uneasily stepped forward after a moment of consideration. "I have a guess," she admitted, "but-" She has stopped speaking because she heard something else, made apparent by her ears pricking up. It was the sound of a ruffling sleeping bag and soft groaning; either Tristan or Tyrone was apparently awakening. "Oh, man," I groaned, "this conversation isn't going to be any more fun the second time."


	3. Settling In

From the waking of Tyrone, and later Tristan, things just hit the fan. The conversation about what Digimon are was unsurprising no less awkward than it was when I had it. I can only imagine how Gage must have felt, particularly having her bit done alone. Luckily, Tyrone somehow managed to take it all in easily and even with a few chuckles. Really, can anything get that guy down? If his nonexistent pet bunny got eaten by his nonexistent dog, I bet he would be able to laugh that off, too!

That was nothing like Tristan, though. Where Tyrone took it like a man, Tristan took it like a five-year-old. A softer approach was already taken with him, the other two humans and I deciding to brief him before he had so much as lay an eye on any of the others. It's tough to blame him for having thought it was all some weird prank by us; not only was it a whole lot to swallow, but, admittedly, it was probably something we would have done, too. He demanded to see the "scary computer monsters," and at a point stopping him became an impossibility.

Long story short, Tristan took a decent look at the group of non-humans and went right into panic mode. Short story long, he swore rather loudly and tried to run off. The poor guy couldn't possibly match Renamon in speed, though, and she had him pinned against a tree within twenty seconds. What's really impressive is that the time includes the five-second head start that she allowed him. Basically, she had just made the worlds greatest ninja look like a slug. After obtaining a verbal agreement from him not to take off again, which did take a little time, he was promptly released, and civilized conversation could finally commence.

Tyrone suddenly became highly reinterested when I brought up the odd device that seemed to appear from nonexistence. "So, you just touched, you flew backwards, and that thing appeared?" he inquired, as I hadn't bothered to bring that up with him.

Veemon and I exchanged a look, shrugged, and responded, "Yeah, pretty much," in perfect synchronization. Tyrone seemed to take still greater interest, nodding and sighing as if he had just been given something important to talk about. I let him see the machine in addition and even showed him the button that sucked up Veemon like a capsule device. We both shouted "No!" and lunged for him, but that ended up being needless; nothing happened. That sure left the two of us in a short state of confusion, but it seemed like an insignificant side note on more important circumstances.

Beep beep! That sound was the more important circumstance of the moment. Chad, Gage's, older brother, had shown up. We lucked out that his van was _designed_ to seat eight, but by sacrificing elbow room and some breathing room, ten was achieved. I'd say personally that the briefing of Chad was the most awkward of all. Perhaps I wasn't even alone in thinking that he wasn't fit to drive after getting such a shock. He'd threatened to spread the word about our "guests," but our only hold over him was that nobody would likely believe him. That will have to do for as long as it can. I sure Gage keeps a close eye on him.

It isn't like we could just leave those guys, was it? I mean, they have each other, but they're quite a ways from home. The consensus among us humans, excluding Gage's brother, was to bring them with us and just see how stuff goes from there. The digimon seemed real grateful for that, even if we had no real idea for what the heck we were doing or how the heck we were to do it.

Even a previous drive home from the urologist with my father at the age of eight, since nobody would be home while he was there, was less awkward feeling than this was. Nobody said a word. Everybody's breathing sounded like multiple loud sighs, and I still think I was able to hear Veemon on my left and Tristan to the right blinking. All that was on my mind for most of the way was trying to find an explanation for my parents. Heck, they wouldn't even tolerate a dog in the house! How in hell was I to explain Veemon, with whom it ended up being paired? Not that there's any problem with Veemon staying with me as opposed to any of the others, of course.

As it turns out, I didn't actually manage to answer that problem before pulling into Gage's driveway back in Richard Court. The downsides of their knowledge seemed to outweigh any positives. For all I know, after all, we would only end up with my parents or even maybe the government breathing down our necks. I never really liked them. The government, that is, not my parents. My parents are awesome.

That's why when asked by my mother why I was brought home, responding with, "Some wild drunk rear-ended us at a red light. We're all okay, though," left me feeling almost like I needed to decide how to punish myself at a later time. I'd wanted to leave right there, but no; my mother has to get worried and ask for more details, making me tell still more lies. "Yeah, Tristan's car was beat up real good… yeah, the breathalyzer picked up alcohol… You're right. Anybody sitting in the back may have been crushed, she was going so fast… A shame about Tyrone's tent. It's history now… Yes, we all gave our statements already, so we don't have to deal with the cops anymore." That last point got strong emphasis.

"But you're all okay?"

"Yes, Mom, none of us were injured. The drunk lady I'm not so sure about, but the eight of us are alright. May I head up to my room now?" My mother conceded for a small moment, but that was it.

"Wait, eight?" she called to me, getting me to halt at the foot of the stairs.

"Wh-what? What are you talking about, 'eight?'" Playing dumb was the first instinct of mine, though I think my next heartbeat was so loud that the neighbors heard it.

"You said the eight of you were okay."

"No, I didn't, and I made a mistake if I did." Well, at least that wasn't entirely a lie. Up the stairs I ran before allowing myself to hear another word from my mother; four consecutive minutes of lying to her was plenty, thank you very much. Besides, there's a reason that throughout that whole conversation, my mother never bothered to ask about the little blue guy who followed me home: She never saw him.

Even after shutting my bedroom door with somewhat more force than was perhaps necessary, enough stuck around long enough to tell me to check outside it another time before feeling not secure, but secure enough to let my "guest" inside. The tree outside of my bedroom window is rather easy to climb and quite conveniently placed for my current purposes. Never has it actually been used to sneak in or out of the house before, so Veemon got the honor of being the first to do that. Sure, maybe I could have brought him in on this digital device if it sucked him in like earlier this afternoon, but once was very much enough for him.

He apparently met no trouble at all ascending to and even ended up resting for some time in the branch necessary to reach. "What took you sho long?" he scolded after the window was opened. I didn't really want to answer that, so it went completely ignored. I just got to work on unscrewing the bug screen that still impeded Veemon's entrance. "Ish shomething bothering you?"

I looked over my shoulder for no valid reason for a few moments before coming out with, "You mean besides the fact that I'm just making all of my moves up as I go along right now? No, nothing." The phrase "No, nothing" came out with significantly reduced volume, though. "Just- there, got it!" The screen chose a very good time for my purposes to become unscrewed, allowing Veemon entry. "Alright," I exclaimed and clapped my hands once in awkwardness, "Welcome, I guess, to casa de Derek."

And that's why there's an otherworldly monster in my bedroom.

"There, that ought to work," concluded Derek, setting his pen and notebook back into the top drawer of his wooden nightstand. "Can't say I've ever written an entry like that, and I bet nobody else can, either. Now…" Derek didn't rise from the white-sheeted bed, but rather turned to face Veemon sitting next to him, "We have to figure out what to do now. I think we both get that even if either of us wanted you to stick around forever, that can't happen. Ideally, it would seem, we could get you back to wherever you got here from. The problem is that we have no freakin' clue of how to do that or of how to figure out how. So, basically, for whatever reason, we're stuck with each other for the foreseeable future. Does that sound accurate?"

Veemon faced the hardwood floor and sighed deeply. His somber reply was, "Yeah, that'sh pretty much it." Derek realized without delay that he had sounded rather insensitive and berated himself internally for it.

The boy rose and shrugged a sort of "shit happens" shrug. "Come on. Be happy!" he exclaimed with an attempt at a grin, "I'm not about to let you starve, after all! I suppose I can only hope that Earth food is to your liking. How do you feel about bacon?"

Veemon had no hair on his brows, but he looked up at Derek and made the expression of raising an eyebrow. "What'sh bacon?"

"Ohoho!" chuckled the boy, "Ah, you have so much to learn, buddy!" he teasingly condescended, "Bacon is only the tip of the metaphorical iceberg! You've yet to meet the Xbox or encounter the music of Twisted Sister! Oh, this is going to be fun!" He almost believed it when he said it, too. Veemon's lip seemed to be getting gradually pulled upwards on one side. "But first, I feel like there's something I want to learn about _you._"

"What'sh that?" Veemon wondered.

Derek seemed to get serious again. "Digimon, digital monsters, I get that. Clever word play. Where I'm lost is what makes you digital. I mean, I see you, I hear you," the boy poked Veemon's chest, "I can touch and feel you. You don't seem digital at all; to me, you seem as real as real gets. And I know I'm not crazy because Tyrone, Gage, and Tristan can sense you all, too!"

Veemon felt relieved. The gravity of his situation only had recently been taken in with full force, but now he was the one with a bit of superiority. "I'm made of data," he explained, "Everything from the digital world is. Why? What are you made of?"

Derek sat back down in embarrassment. He'd never been asked a question like that after all. "Matter," he said, "I'm made of matter. Everything in- you know, the only thing I can think to call it is the 'real world,' but it seems like your place and mine are equally real. Well, for right, now, I'll just say everything in the 'real' world is made of matter. I guess data is sort of like your matter, then?"

Veemon knew not the answer to that question for sure, so he just shrugged and conceded, "I guessh sho."

Derek chuckled nervously again. "Well, I don't get it, but I don't think I ever will, and my head hurts enough already."

"Agreed," nodded Veemon, and the two shared sincere smiles this time. Veemon's belly chose then to grumble in protest of emptiness; he had received no nourishment since before appearing on Earth. The smiles turned to chuckles.

Derek headed towards the door, touched his hand to the knob, and looked back to Veemon. "I'll be right back," Veemon was told, "with your first sample of human food." He exited then.

With a closed door between them, they both thought to themselves, _Maybe I can handle this_.


End file.
